MCDONALD’S slammed former CEO Steve Easterbrook as ‘morally bankrupt’ in a legal filing Monday. The fiery statement from the fast food giant came after Easterbrook filed a motion seeking to dismiss a McDonald’s sexual misconduct lawsuit against him. Earlier in August, McDonald’s filed a lawsuit in Delaware alleging Easterbrook committed fraud and lied during the […]
MCDONALD’S slammed former CEO Steve Easterbrook as ‘morally bankrupt’ in a legal filing Monday.
The fiery statement from the fast food giant came after Easterbrook filed a motion seeking to dismiss a McDonald’s sexual misconduct lawsuit against him.
Earlier in August, McDonald’s filed a lawsuit in Delaware alleging Easterbrook committed fraud and lied during the company’s probe into a relationship he had with an employee, CNBC reports.
McDonald’s said it found three additional relationships with employees that Easterbrook failed to disclose before his firing.
As a result, McDonald’s is seeking to recover millions of dollars in compensation that Easterbrook received as part of his separation agreement.
The separation agreement, however, also included some stipulations that benefited McDonald’s, including non-compete and non-disparagement clauses, which Easterbrook’s attorney pointed out in his request for dismissal of the case.
According to Monday’s court filing, Easterbrook argued for dismissal and claimed he should be “excused from lying” to the company because McDonald’s had the “new” information about his alleged relationships the entire time.
Easterbrook allegedly deleted emails containing evidence of those relationships on his phone, yet the emails remained on the company’s servers, McDonald’s said.
McDonald’s said in its filing that Easterbrook’s argument boils down to “he cannot be liable because, as a matter of law, he did not hide his misconduct well enough.”
“His argument that he should not be held responsible for even repeated bad acts is morally bankrupt and fails under the law,” McDonald’s said in a statement obtained by CNBC.
It continued: “When McDonald’s investigated, Steve Easterbrook lied. He violated the Company’s policies, disrespected its values, and abused the trust of his co-workers, the Board, our franchisees, and our shareholders.”
National Restaurant News reported that McDonald’s expanded its investigation to include more alleged corporate deceit last week.
McDonald’s claims Easterbrook also covered up misconduct within the human resources department, which led to the exit of the company’s then-chief people officer, David Fairhurst, who abruptly left the company the day after Easterbrook was fired in 2019.
